


Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

by misstriplem



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: POV John Marston, Post-Video Game: Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), Red Dead Redemption 2 Spoilers, Video Game: Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22231696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misstriplem/pseuds/misstriplem
Summary: John Marston hates Saint Denis. It is a city of ghosts, every one of them a reminder of what John was and what he could never be. But, just when he thinks he can't break away from the past, he receives a reminder that he is precisely where he is meant to be.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

John Marston hated Saint Denis.

He’d hated it long before the bank heist that had ultimately resigned him to the chain gang at Sisika. He’d hated it before Agents Ross and Milton forced him to watch as they shot Hosea Matthews in the street out of spite. He’d hated it before he’d even stepped foot in the city bounds, because it had meant one thing and one thing only.

The world had finally caught up to them: the brightness of civilization, the tame hand of justice, had, despite all their running and killing and fighting, wrapped its fingers tightly around their ankles and dragged them to their knees.

John hadn’t wanted to admit it—none of them had. But after that inbred Braithwaite bitch stole his son and forced him into indentured servitude for that odious Italian bastard Bronte (however brief it had been), he’d known that things would never be the same.

And then Arthur…

John struck a match on the stone building at his back and held it up to the cigarette propped between his lips. The city bustled around him, its perpetual stench and the lull of machines sliding like venom beneath his skin. People passed him by; some glanced his way, their brows furrowed in consternation, while others astutely ignored him. Conversation flitted like flies through the air; they were words that sounded too proper for his rough and ragged ears, and the lilting French bits he managed to pick up jarred his thoughts as he fought to decipher them. He became almost immediately frustrated, glowered, and blew out a thick cloud of smoke in defiance of the world around him.

To be fair, no one had seen it coming—the tuberculosis, that is. John hadn’t even really noticed Arthur was sick when they’d first arrived at Shady Belle. He’d seen him coughing, every now and again, but that swamp was nearly as foul and putrid as Micah Bell, and they’d all felt its effects in ways they didn’t quite want to admit.

It wasn’t until after Arthur and Sadie had sprung him from the hangman’s noose that he saw— _really_ saw—the change in Arthur. The sickness had eaten away his essence, the very thing that made Arthur Morgan larger than life and as constant and looming a presence in the camp as the moon in the sky. John could still remember the few times he’d spot Arthur slipping out of his tent in the cold, barren nights at Beaver Hollow, when the moon was high and the camp restless and prone to dreaming of the end that was nigh. Arthur had slipped down the hill the led to the river just beneath the camp, his breath ragged and rasping, his feet stumbling here and there as he fought for what little control he’d had left.

And then there’d been the coughing.

John took a drag of the cigarette and met the eyes of a man whose errant gaze had found him on the street corner he’d claimed. He dared the man to say something, anything, to give him an excuse to draw his gun and put to rest the clawing, aching memories that had him in their vile clutches.

The man moved on, unwilling to cross the strange, scar-faced man, and left John to wallow in his thoughts.

It hadn’t been difficult to miss the sound of blood as it filled Arthur’s lungs. Once, John had watched while Arthur barely managed to stand beside a tree, doubled over with the weight of his wet, hacking coughs. A single, pale hand dug into the bark of the tree in a feeble attempt to keep him upright.

The coughing had lasted a lifetime.

In the morning, John had found the flecks and globs of blood that spackled the stunted grass at the tree’s roots. That was when the truth of it all—Arthur’s illness, the gang’s irrevocable fate, his own shortcomings as a man, a father, a husband—had descended upon him.

_When the time comes, you gotta run, and don’t look back._

The taste of the cigarette became bitter and unbearable. John sighed out a last, lingering cloud and tossed the smoldering butt onto the ground. He lifted his boot and stomped it into the pavement, and still the memories lingered.

_Soon, you gotta go. Go…and don’t look back._

John had always hated Saint Denis. There were too many ghosts here, too many things left unsaid and words spat out in anger or desperation—or both, he wasn’t sure which. All he knew was that he was still here, plopped into the city like a pawn on a chessboard, wandering the streets looking for…what?

He shoved away from the wall. A sour, sorrowful taste clung to the back of his throat as he slipped into the stream of people winding their way through the city, searching for that bright, impossible future that seemed to linger just out of reach. Maybe they’d find it; maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d all end up ghosts, in the end, chained to what could have been rather than living the life they _should_ have been living.

And there would always be John Marston, stuck somewhere in the middle, useless and worthless and amounting to jack shit.

John knew that wasn’t entirely true—at least, not in this particular moment. If it were true, then Abigail would have stayed gone and Beecher’s Hope would be just as empty and desolate as the day he’d signed his name to the bank loan. If it were true, then Arthur would have never saved his life that night on the mountain.

He swiped a hand across his face and wicked the sweat from his brow. This goddamn city was always hot and humid, what with the factories spewing their mess into the sky and the swamps that sat just outside the city. People wanted to pretend it was glorious here, that the lights and fancy buildings were just the sort of mask Lemoyne needed to pretend it wasn’t as fucked up as it really was.

John rounded a street corner, his feet carrying him aimlessly back in the direction of the train station. Soon, he’d be back at home in West Elizabeth, in the tender (but sometimes prickly) embrace of his wife and the tremulous (sometimes fearful) affection of his son. Maybe he wasn’t so worthless, after all.

He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. Nah, he was still pretty worthless—just maybe not as much as he used to be.

John Marston continued on his path, heedless of the world around him. It was too fast paced, too starkly _civilized_ for his liking, despite the fact that he, too, played at being civilized. Trolleys passed along the street, their bells singing pleasantly in the afternoon light; once or twice John nodded to men who tipped their hats to him, heedless of the fact that he was quite obviously not from Saint Denis nor was he in anyway respectably dressed (whatever that meant).

It was in one of the moments when his eyes lifted to the crowd splayed in front of him that something caught his attention.

There, tucked between the shoulders of two women, was a hat. It sat atop its owner’s head as he sauntered in front of them, his shoulders swinging in a decidedly indefatigable manner.

John’s steps slowed. He blinked and craned his head to peer more closely at the hat and its owner, despite the women that had crowded in to block it from sight.

Something was shifting uncomfortably in his gut. Memories rushed to the surface, demanding to be felt and acknowledged, but John held them at bay. Finally, the women moved, and the hat came firmly back into view. This time, John’s steps came to a sudden halt.

He knew that hat.

He’d seen it a hundred—a _thousand_ —times before. Its well-worn leather was just as familiar as his own hat, which, after a quick check, still sat firmly atop his head. This assurance made the sight of the hat in front of him all the more impossible, because it shouldn’t be there.

That hat—the one on which his gaze was currently affixed—was at this very moment tucked safely in the trunk at the foot of his bed in West Elizabeth.

John Marston stared at the impossible sight of Arthur Morgan’s hat as it cut through the crowd and slipped down one of the side streets of Saint Denis. He then discovered that it wasn’t just the improbable hat that had suddenly made him feel like the world had skipped a beat; it was the person who wore it that was also so starkly out of place, so incongruent with the rest of the city, that John wondered if he’d had too much to drink (he hadn’t had a drop since last night) or if he was suddenly afflicted with a disease so fierce that he was now prone to hallucinations (he didn’t think so).

The crowd and the shadow of the alley didn’t give him a proper view, but he could swear that the figure he’d seen was none other than Arthur Morgan.

He didn’t think. John only pushed through the crowd and down the alley as his heart lurched in his chest. Even here, the people thronged about the stores that lined the cobbled street, making passage and sight all the more arduous. John’s focused narrowed to the barest sliver of brim that he could just make out and pressed forward. Once, he shoved a lady aside without quite realizing what he was doing. She stumbled, turned up a very displeased frown at him (one that, for all intents and purposes, mirrored his wife’s to a startling degree) and swatted his shoulder with her purse.

“ _Imbècile_ ,” she hissed at him in anger. John didn’t need translation to understand precisely what the young French debutante had called him.

He grunted out a sigh and made his apologies, forgoing his target in an attempt at chivalry. When John turned back to the crowd and found the hat and its owner absent, he cursed under his breath.

This was precisely why it didn’t pay to be gallant.

He continued on, for the moment deflated and not a little confused. John forced his mind toward reason; Arthur was dead—had _been_ dead for some time. It was a fact that John had come to terms with, though the memories were still too painful to bear. Since he’d just allowed some of them to return for however brief a time, it stood to reason that he was likely projecting his memories onto the faces of the people around him.

Really, it sounded like something Abigail might say, and was thusly something he knew he’d scoff at had she been the one to say it. And yet, it was all John had to keep him moving forward.

But then the hat reappeared.

John started and his steps quickened. For a moment, the crowd parted long enough for him to get a full glimpse of the figure with the hat. And, while John’s limited reason still persisted that it was the ghost of a memory and nothing more, he couldn’t quite ignore the detail with which he’d created this figment.

It was indeed Arthur’s hat; that much was given. And the body to which it was attached was indeed Arthur’s, down his swagger and the purposeful swing of his arms. The shirt was undeniably Arthur’s: sky blue with thin black stripes—one of his favorites, if memory served (and John knew it did). Even the worn pants and boots were so strikingly familiar that John wondered if he hadn’t cracked his head open on the pavement at some point during his walk and spilled the memory into being himself.

The more stubborn, persistent part of his brain rejected this sight entirely; the other part of him, the one that always wanted to believe in the goodness and hope in the stories Jack so loved, knew that he wasn’t sick, dumb, or dead—it knew precisely who this was.

Just when John was sure his brain would split from the impossibility of the entire matter, the figure turned its head slowly over one shoulder. The shadows here were limited, though the buildings stretched high over the heads of the crowd. Sunlight still managed to spill in with just enough brightness for him to see the familiar cut of the square jaw and the stubble that lined it.

His stomach dropped. His bones rattled with a cold so pervasive and penetrating that he didn’t think he’d ever be warm again.

It was Arthur Morgan. His presence was improbable—no, flat out impossible—but John would know him anywhere.

He’d grown up with Arthur. He’d killed and lied and stolen with Arthur. He’d endured Arthur’s criticism and judgment for more years than he’d cared to remember. John dreamed so often of him in the years since his passing that there was simply no way in which he would ever mistake that face for another’s.

Somehow, he forced his legs to move. Somehow, he cut through the crowd without angering anyone else in pursuit of the ghost turned memory turned human. John watched as Arthur (he wasn’t really sure if he should call this specter by that name, but what else was he to do?) slipped down another street. John followed, slipping further and further away from the train station and the home—the real, unimagined home—that waited for him.

John followed, desperate now for another glimpse at him. He had to be sure; he had to know if he’d finally gone stupid after all these years, or if something else, something unknowable and mysterious, was at play here. But when he careened out into the main thoroughfare of Saint Denis, open and unimpeded by the buildings of the alley, John no longer spotted the hat or its owner.

He stood at the corner in front of the saloon, his chest heaving and his mind racing. John placed his hands on his hips and searched the faces of the crowd for the first time since his arrival in the city, but none of them was the one he wanted to see.

John felt deflated. Disappointment so thorough and painful clawed through him until every last ounce of hope he’d felt at the sight of his fallen brother drowned in its wake. He hung his head, feeling a bit ashamed at his foolishness, and wondered why he’d ever thought the ghost had been real in the first place.

Perhaps he’d heard one too many of Jack’s stories. Possibly it was the city that had muddled his proper thoughts, twisted them with the past that refused to let him go. Whatever it had been, John relinquished it and resolved to head back to the train station. He needed to get back home; he needed to hold Abigail in his arms, to know his son was safe.

John Marston needed to get the hell out of this city and leave all this bullshit behind once and for all.

He dropped his hands to his sides and turned to head back down the alley, disappointment still hanging like a shroud around his shoulders.

Then he saw him.

At first, the crowd was like a wave that brought him in and out of sight. But just when John was sure it had been just another hopeful wish of memory, the crowd thinned. The wrought iron fence of the park stretched to the left and to the right, holding back the persistent foliage beyond. A beggar huddled on the sidewalk, his tin cup clutched in both hands as he held it aloft and bemoaned his turmoil to the passersby. A pair of lawmen sauntered by the beggar, ignored him, and promptly set about their business.

And there, on the corner where one street met the next, was Arthur Morgan.

He stood with one foot crossed over the other, his back against the column that connected the fences. His hands clutched his belt in that familiar way he had, the very same way that used to irritate the shit out of John. And that hat, the one that he’d given John when the end had finally come, was pulled low over his face as his head dipped toward the street, leaving most of his face in shadow.

Most, that was, except for the familiar cut of the jaw and the mouth that was so blatantly Arthur that John wasn’t quite sure what to believe anymore.

John swallowed and pondered what to do. The people on the street wandered past Arthur, heedless of his presence. Was he supposed to call out to him? Was he supposed to go to him, to find out what in the hell was going on here?

But something held John rooted to the spot. The moments stretched endlessly into one another; John’s heart continued to beat, his lungs continued to breathe, and the world continued to slip past him. And all the while, Arthur Morgan, who was absolutely, positively deceased, stood on the opposite of the street, looking as though he belonged precisely where he stood.

Then his head lifted a little, just enough so that the sunlight spilled across his features. Just enough so that John could see the clear, crisp blue-green of his eyes. They landed squarely on him.

John’s heart leapt into his throat.

Arthur—rather the ghost of him, as John supposed he should say—watched him for the space of a few heartbeats. John stood frozen in front of the saloon, ignorant of the city he so despised, and watched as Arthur’s mouth curled ever so slightly into a familiar, knowing smile.

The ringing of trolley bells cut sharply into John’s consciousness. He blinked as the car slid right into view, cutting off the sight of Arthur.

He ran around the front of the car, ignoring the driver’s shouts as he slipped into the street. But by the time John rounded the trolley car, Arthur was gone.

The world continued on as it had before. The people of Saint Denis wandered through the streets, the trolleys carried their passengers to and fro, and John Marston was left standing like a fool in the middle of the street.

Feeling like a fool wasn’t much different than the standard fare of John Marston’s life—but there was certainly one thing that _was_ different.

He crossed back to the side of the street he’d been standing on and made his way back down the alley toward the train station. Soon, he’d board the next train home and pick up the life he’d built for Abigail and Jack.

Because John Marston knew without really knowing _how_ he knew the reason for Arthur Morgan’s presence in Saint Denis. It wasn’t just that this city was as full of specters as it was living, breathing folk; it wasn’t just that this was the place where they’d both lost what had been left of their loyalty to the gang that had raised them. And it wasn’t just because John had come here to settle some unfinished business.

Arthur had appeared to settle the one question that had plagued John’s dreams since that night on the mountain. It had pervaded nearly every waking moment since the days in which he, Sadie, and Charles had tracked down Micah and put an end to his poisonous, infectious existence. It wasn’t just that John needed to know he’d done right by Arthur and everyone else that fell by risking the life he’d built.

John Marston needed to know that Arthur was at peace.

And that smile, the one John had grown up with, the one he both hated and revered, had given him all the answer he needed.

A few things crossed John’s mind as he boarded the train back to West Elizabeth. First, he was sure now that he’d made the right decision in purchasing Beecher’s Hope for his wife and son. It wasn’t that he’d thought it the wrong one, not really; it was just not that now, after seeing Arthur, he knew he was finally becoming the person he should have been a long time ago. Second, John knew there was still a lot of living to do. It’d taken weeks of groveling to get Abigail to understand why he’d gone after Micah, but even through all that nonsense, he’d never been quite able to articulate to his wife _why_ he had to do it. There were even some nights when he began to doubt the verity of his decision and wonder if he wasn’t always destined to be the hard-headed fool that tried to do good but only ended up doing bad.

But that smile had told him all he needed to know. The road ahead would be difficult, but what road worth traveling was ever easy? It had taken John a long time to figure it out, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that as long as he had Abigail and Jack, all would be well.

Arthur had given him that, and so much more.

When the train pulled out of Saint Denis, John looked upon the fading shadow of the city and thought that maybe he didn’t hate it quite so much as he used to. Maybe it was a bit more than just a mess of buildings and ghosts and hopes strangled by civilization.

Maybe _he_ was a bit more than he gave himself credit for.

John Marston leaned back in the seat, arms braced across the back, and smiled as the train carried to where he was always meant to be.

Home.


End file.
